


Badguy

by WandererRiha



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Super Mario Bros. (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Gen, Redemption arc?, fic at 2am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28423569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WandererRiha/pseuds/WandererRiha
Summary: Who's the villain, here?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	Badguy

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own a copy of Smash Bros. I have played various iterations an hour at a time at friends' houses. I am only loosely familiar with the lore and canon. I make no pretense at following along.

Out of everyone, why in Gaia’s name did they have to invite _him?_. Cloud eyes Sephiroth from the edges of the room, doing his best to keep as much space as possible between them. Why couldn’t it have been Aerith? Or Vincent? They’re both hugely popular. But no, it had to be the batshit homicidal memory-stalker. Cloud takes another sip of punch and makes a face, cursing the fact that this place is family-friendly and so it’s just fruit punch with too much pineapple. What he wouldn’t give for a Tifa-made stiff drink.

Sephiroth isn’t paying much attention to him at the moment, which is fine by Cloud. He seems more actively engaged in trying to assess all the characters surrounding him. He’s quiet, collected, aloof as always, but there’s something about his eyes that suggests… No, not panic, but possibly bewilderment. This isn’t an arena where he can use his sword, and not being able to just stab anything he doesn’t like must be getting to him.

Someone else has filled out the “Hello My Name Is” tag pasted haphazardly to the lapel of his leather coat. Cloud briefly marvels at whoever had the balls to put it there. The handwriting is all wrong, and bunched up toward the end where they ran out of space. Perhaps it's to be expected that the other villains have clustered around him, trying to find out what they have in common.

“So what’s your story?” Bowser asks him.

“My story?” Sephiroth echoes, evidently confused.

“Yeah. What do you do back home?”

“Oh. I’m a SOLDIER.”

Not the Silver General? Not Shinra’s perfect weapon? Cloud had thought, for some reason, that Sephiroth might go into more detail.

“Ah, a military man,” Ganondorf nods. “What’s your specialty?”

“Er, no. SOLDIER is a military branch in its own right,” Sephiroth tries to explain. “It’s an elite corps of troops augmented with mako, Jenova, and specialized training.”

“What’s mako?”

“The lifeforce of the Planet.”

The villains blink, but go with it.

“And what’s Jenova?”

“My mother, also known as the Crisis from the Sky. She fell from space and wiped out an ancient race of people.”

They’re staring now; not just the small cluster of bad guys, but some of the others within hearing distance.

“I’m a little afraid to ask about the specialized training,” Ganondorf comments.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Sephiroth assures him. “My two friends and I were built to be SOLDIERs from conception. My mother died when I was born, so my father raised me in the lab.”

“In the lab?” Bowser sounds more than a little concerned.

“Yes. It was easier to perform experiments and tweak my treatments and training as needed.”

“That’s nice you’re close to your dad?” Bowser attempts.

“Not especially,” Sephiroth shrugs. “I died on a mission and Jenova used my reanimated corpse to summon a meteor to destroy the planet.”

The whole damn room is staring, and the silence has taken on physical weight, it’s so heavy. Cloud glares at Sephiroth over his fruit punch. Gods, why is he like this? It occurs to Cloud that everything Sephiroth has said is true. The glib delivery actually makes it sound worse, somehow. He isn’t playing up his suffering, just stating the facts. Except…

“What about the part where you were gonna become a god and rule the cosmos with your alien mother?”

Is he _blushing?_ No. No way. No way in hell does Sephiroth have it in him to be chagrined.

“I believed that once; that I would rule side-by-side with what I thought was my mother.”

“It was never enough for you, was it?” Cloud accuses. “You couldn’t stand to see anyone happy. If you couldn’t have it, no one could. You had to destroy whatever you couldn’t own.”

“I did,” Sephiroth agrees. Cloud blinks, having not expected that. “But that was not, in the end, why I heeded her lies and carried out her will.”

“Oh really?” Cloud is not impressed. “Why then?”

“Think, Cloud,” Sephiroth prompts, as if he is still a Commanding Officer teaching a new recruit a lesson. “What are gods to mere mortals?”

“You wanted to subjugate everyone on Gaia.”

Sephiroth shakes his head. “No. No, I had power in SOLDIER. What was the one thing I did not have that a god does?”

It takes Cloud a moment, then the answer ricochettes off his brain as if he’d been struck by a fast-moving projectile. “Worship.” He can’t believe it. _Won’t_ believe it. “You wanted to be defied.”

Sephiroth sighs, his deep voice quiet and very small, pitched so only those standing right next to them can hear. “No. I wanted to be loved.”

“Oh _honey!_ ” Peach all but wails, stepping forward, but Samus beats her to it, lifting Sephiroth off his feet in a crushing hug. He flails, alarmed, but cannot wriggle from her grasp. Cloud can’t decide if she’s really that strong, or if Sephiroth secretly doesn’t want to get away.

“What are you doing?!” Sephiroth cries, kicking in protest. “Put me down at once!”

“No,” Samus tells him, squeezing tighter. “This is for your own good.”

Sephiroth squirms and kicks, but is forced to hold still as everyone descends for an enormous group hug. Sephiroth thrashes wildly, too much white showing around his catslit eyes. Eventually those eyes land on Cloud. His expression is definitely one of panic now; pleading, _begging_ for help. It’s strange enough that Cloud is shocked into stillness rather than deliberately withholding aid. All he can do is stand there and watch as the fight goes out of Sephiroth. Eventually he just hangs there in Samus’ arms, resigned to his fate.

\--

Sephiroth isn’t in any of the starter rounds, the logic being that he’d accidentally kill someone. Instead, he’s been sent on a tour of some of the arenas. Isabella’s in charge; Kirby and Pikachu are helping. How the hell that’s supposed to work since none of them speak actual _words_ , Cloud has no idea. That’s Sephiroth’s problem, not his.

There’s a sort of informal virgin cocktail hour every evening. Everyone collects in the social hall to mingle and catch up, and sip drinks that do not contain nearly enough alcohol for this nonsense. It wasn’t bad, honestly. Cloud usually hangs in the corner with Link and his brother? Son? Cousin? Alternate-timeline-not-so-evil-twin? Cloud doesn’t know and isn’t sure he wants to hear the explanation. He hears Hylian history is...complicated. Anyway, Cloud, Link, and Wild (it’s what they call the one in blue to tell them apart) are just chilling and not talking and it’s fine. Except Isabella and the critters aren’t back yet. Peach is fretting a bit over this to Mario who offers to look into it. Oh hells no. No, Cloud is not gonna send his favorite pizza-eating uncle to face off with Sephiroth. No. Just no.

“I’ll go,” Cloud volunteers and shoulders past them toward Isabella’s island. Everything’s so small and cartoony here, as if one of Marlene’s crayon drawings had come to life. It’s cute. Too soft and gentle for characters like himself; certainly for Sephiroth. The sound of crying makes him quicken his pace, but Cloud stumbles to a halt when he finds the source.

Sephiroth sits leaning against a tree on the beach, Isabella kneeling beside him with one paw on his arm, Kirby on his other side in a similar position, and half a dozen Pokemon sitting in his lap. This by itself would have been confusing enough. What truly throws Cloud is the fact that _Sephiroth_ is the one who’s crying. Not just crying, full on ugly-sobbing as if his dog, his grandma, and his best friend had all been killed by the same freight train. It occurs to Cloud that Sephiroth does not, and never did, have any of those things. He’s not even trying to be dignified, to hold back. His face is red and his nose is running. Isabella offers him a handkerchief the size of a postage stamp. Sephiroth just cries harder and lets go of Pikachu so that he can put an arm around her. Satisfied that no one is in immediate peril, Cloud heads back. Hopefully no one saw him.

\--

They’re still wading through the preliminary fights. Cloud and Sephiroth have yet to compete. They stand silent, observing the matches, very pointedly not looking at each other. Finally Cloud comes over and stands just out of arm’s reach. Sephiroth actually edges away a few extra inches, as if afraid of encroaching on Cloud’s personal space.

“I saw you the other night,” Cloud says, deciding to get straight to the point.

Sephiroth says nothing, just watches as Zelda somehow manages to blast Samus clean off the platform.

“I knew you as a trooper, back before you lost your godsdamned mind. You were a terrible actor and a worse liar.”

“I still am.”

“So if the pity party wasn’t an act, what the hell was it?”

The silence stretches between them, tense and awkward.

“They asked why I was on the villain roster. They’d heard I was a hero in my world. I tried to tell them. They didn’t understand, so I had to try to explain. Hearing my own words… I just… I lost it.”

His gaze drops from the battle to the floor, as if ashamed.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Cloud just stares at him, quizzical. “You don’t gotta apologize to me.”

“Don’t I?” It’s the first he’s challenged Cloud since they got here. “I’ve caused you nothing but grief ever since Nibelheim. There is no way for me to make right what I put you through.”

Cloud’s bewilderment deepens. It’s been a long time since anything Sephiroth said made sense. “You sound more like your old self. Like the CO I remember.”

“I feel more like my old self. It’s been a long time since I felt like anything.”

“You mean besides spite?” Okay, so Cloud’s still a little bitter about the whole thing.

“I could blame much of that on Jenova, but it does not change that it was my body carrying out the atrocities.”

“What about the ‘I will never be a memory’ bullshit?”

“I don’t want to be a legend; not as the Silver General, nor as the Weapon that lost his mind and tried to destroy the planet in the name of his alien parasite mother.” A pause, strangely heavy with grief. “If that is all people think of when they hear my name, then I would rather it be forgotten entirely.”

Cloud blinked. “What?”

Sephiroth turned to meet his eyes; his own blank and tired and so, so sad. “It was the best I could manage at the time. My mind was so full of Jenova, it was difficult to think. You killed me once as a teenaged trooper. You were my last hope. You were the only one who stood a chance of killing me.”

Cloud can’t think, can’t breathe. He _can’t_ have heard that right. Sephiroth’s playing him. He’s got to be. But...he was always bad at making shit up; he’s just too literal, too logical for that. This whole time...Sephiroth had been begging him in a weird, backward way, to kill him. Well. He’d gotten his wish in the end. Mostly. So is it Sephiroth or Jenova using his face, his body, or rather the mutated remains of some random SOLDIER to torment him? And why him? Is he really the only thing standing between Gaia and the remains of Jenova? Surely not. It’s as impossible as Sephiroth wanting to die, to _really_ die, to be wiped not just from the planet, but from living memory.

Cloud’s not sure he can fulfill that wish. He thinks about it for a long time.

\--

“How do you fly with just one wing?” Pit wants to know.

“I don’t.” Sephiroth is calmly sharpening his sword, the long blade laid over his knees, whetstone whisking lightly over the curved steel. “I can jump very high, much higher than you’d believe. I use the wing to direct my trajectory. That’s all it’s really good for.”

“Did something happen to the other one?”

“No. I only ever had one. Until I had…” he pauses, lips moving but voice silent as he counts, “seven.”

Pit blinks. “Do I want to know?” The others are wise enough not to ask for explanations now.

“Probably not.”

Sephiroth’s getting better at censoring himself too.

They still watch him, but no one’s actively afraid of him. There’s a limit to the damage he can do here. There is no such thing as death, barely such a thing as pain; a Valhalla with Looney Tunes logic and similar consequences. He can’t hurt anyone here, not even himself. But that’s what the quiet watchfulness reminds him of; vigils over fellow troopers with concussions, or PTSD. There had been a couple of guys who’d seen action in Wutai and it hadn’t sat well with them. Everyone just...sort of kept them in their line of sight so as to make sure they were okay without seeming too intrusive. That’s how they are with Sephiroth.

Ganondorf and Bowser seem to be vying for the right to serve as mentor, meanwhile Peach and Daisy keep trying to ply him with sweets and goodies. Yes they’ve made more than enough for everyone, but they aren’t satisfied until they’ve witnessed Sephiroth ingesting whatever it is they’ve brought him. It’s a good thing he’s a SOLDIER, he’d probably have a stomach ache after so much sugar. The Pokemon all love him. Maybe it’s the Alpha Male vibes Sephiroth no doubt exudes. Little Pichu likes to sit on his shoulder like a cat. Sephiroth doesn’t seem to mind.

It’s so weird to see him like this. This isn’t the blood-thirsty psychopath that tried to destroy the planet, who has haunted his dreams ever since. This...this is the guy who he’d thought had died in Nibelheim. This is the tough yet fair commander, the one the entirety of SOLDIER and a fair chunk of the regular army would have followed to the ends of Gaia if he’d asked them. It’s a shame, Cloud reflects, that he didn’t. Maybe all the drama and trauma could have been avoided? Or at least gone differently? It’s something to think about.

The buzzer sounds, signaling the beginning of the higher tier competitors. Cloud and Sephiroth are up. The chosen arena is a simulation of the bottom of the Northern Crater. While he’d anticipated such a setting, it’s still unnerving to be there again, facing down Sephiroth yet again. At least he’s got his jacket on this time. Cloud is thrown back, into that desperate whirlwind of a year when he was searching for himself as much as the man in the black coat.

He knows who he is now. He’s not afraid of this shadow anymore. The buzzer sounds and Cloud launches himself at Sephiroth, Buster sword at the ready. Sephiroth is waiting for him, Masamune drawn. It’s...weirdly easy. Just as it had been, fighting his way through the hellish depths of the crater only to find a barely conscious man with tangled silver hair and the ragged remains of a 1st Class uniform. Cloud had not hesitated then, and he does not hesitate now. Omnislash makes short work of Sephiroth, cutting short any attack he may have been preparing. Cloud follows it up with a finishing blow. It sends Sephiroth sprawling to his back on the ground. Distantly, Cloud hears the announcer award him the round, but it barely registers. He follows up, leaping into the air to bring the buster sword down hard. There’s a gasp from the crowd, the music cuts, and the arena goes black.

Panic shoots up his spine as strong hands seize Cloud from behind. The lights come up, all but blinding him. Voices, tight with alarm, swarm around him like angry bees. Cloud shakes them off to continue his attack. It takes Donkey Kong and both Links to pull him back and pry the buster sword from his grip.

“Let me go!” Cloud insists, struggling to break free. Half the cast is trying to calm him, the other is clustered around Sephiroth. The wall of bodies parts, people and creatures stepping back so Cloud can see Zelda with Sephiroth’s head cradled in her lap, buster sword sticking up straight through his middle.

_Oh shit._

This isn’t the sort of violence allowed in this realm. There is no blood, barely any pain. That does not change the fact that the buster sword has severed Sephiroth’s body virtually in half, a pool of blood puddling around him. Zelda’s white skirts are stained crimson with it. She nods to Wild who carefully pries it loose. Sephiroth jerks with the movement, obviously in pain, blood painting his lips. Zelda does her best to soothe him, the triforce shard embedded in her hand glowing with pure white light as she heals his injuries.

Everyone stands there, confused and afraid, as the wound disappears and Sephiroth struggles to sit up. Some law of the Cosmos has been broken and it is Cloud’s fault. He brought bloodshed into this protected realm, and now perhaps he has tainted it forever. All of them look at him, as if expecting him to somehow undo what’s been done.

Cloud has nothing to tell them. Instead, he reclaims his sword, turns, and walks away.

\--

There are no more disasters in the subsequent rounds. No blood, no gore, nothing but cartoon violence. His buster sword might as well be made of foam for all the harm it causes. He does not fight Sephiroth again. He’s afraid to; not for himself, or even for Sephiroth, but for this space-between. He doesn’t want to be the one to ruin it.

Much as he hates to admit it, Isabella’s island is one of Cloud’s favorite locations too. He finds Sephiroth there under the same tree. He isn’t crying this time, just sitting quietly in the moonlight, watching the waves. Pichu is asleep in his lap.

“Do you feel better?” he asks, not looking up.

Feeling scolded, Cloud sits down on the sand beside him. “Not really.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“Wait- are you saying you did that on purpose?”

“I didn’t let you win, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, I mean all the blood and stuff. Was that just an illusion?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell was that all about?”

“I wanted to give you the chance for vengeance. If you managed to kill me, so much the better.”

Cloud isn’t sure what to say to that.

“Clearly, it didn’t work.”

“No,” Cloud agrees. “I hope I didn’t wreck it for anyone.”

“I’m amazed you managed what you did. I’m told it’s a first.”

“Thanks, I think?”

Sephiroth is quiet for a long moment, gently smooths a gloved hand over Pichu’s soft fur.

“I should leave.”

“Why?”

“My continued presence is detrimental, especially to you.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” Cloud insists. “I think you should stay here for as long as you want, for as long as you can. Not just because I don’t want to deal with your bullshit back home but...but…” he trails off searching for words.

“You seem happy here. More like your old self. Why go back to a place where you’re somehow miserable despite being dead?”

Cloud felt an inexplicable thrill of victory as Sephiroth snorted a soft laugh. “I suppose.”

“You sure you don’t want to be remembered?”

“I’m sure. Erase my name. I will not be a hero or a byword. Let me vanish into obscurity. Some things are best forgotten.”

“Okay,” Cloud nodded. “If that’s what you want, I’ll make sure of it.”

“Thank you.”

Cloud stood, saluted, turned and left. Eventually, maybe he could forget too.


End file.
